


IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

by AgnesClementine



Series: Coldwave Winter week 2018 [6]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Coldwave Winter Week 2018, Leonard Snart Returns, M/M, Post-Oculus (DC's Legends of Tomorrow)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 04:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17134577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgnesClementine/pseuds/AgnesClementine
Summary: “Oh, God,” Haircut says emphatically, “Santa is a serial killer.”“Great,” Sara grouches, “I guess we’re going to 1978, then.”Or, the one where Mick is miserable until a certain someone comes back.********************Prompt for the 24th Dec- Oculus fix/Len lives + snowing





	IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

**Author's Note:**

> My brain turns Christmas into a murder investigation.
> 
> Let me know what you think and enjoy! :)

The mall is absolutely full. People are cramped in, wall to wall, taking shelter from the cold outside and walking around like one moving, pulsing mass. Mick elbows some guy in a fancy coat that gets in his way, Len doing the same, while Lisa hums happily between the two of them, pulling them forward by their hands.

Mick’s not exactly a fan of Christmas time, although the majority of his family was. He guesses that the early Sunday masses and the love of our Lord and Savior never really appealed to him. Especially after the fire.

He’s mostly neutral, but Lisa freaking loves it.

Her eyes are jumping from the colorful decorations to Christmas lights strung up everywhere, to the random groups singing carols on every corner. She’s bouncing on the balls of her feet with excitement. Mick knew they shouldn’t have let her have that much chocolate for breakfast.

“What’s that?” She wonders, looking at the particular group of people standing in a long line, waiting for something.

Len cranes his neck to take a look. “Looks like Santa’s doing some autographing.” He informs her.

Lisa gasps with delight. “Quick! Let’s go!”

And that’s how they end up standing in a line for half an hour just so Lisa could take a photo with some guy dressed in red.

"You going next?" Len teases when Lisa skips off to the booth to collect her photo.

Mick makes a face before replying, "Thanks, but I'll pass."

"What? Not a fan of sitting in old man's lap and telling him what you want?" 

Len sometimes really has a way with words.

"Nah, I'll let you go."

Len snorts, "He's not my type," and leans against him, "and I have no wishes that need granting." 

Mick, acutely aware of the warmth he's radiating, thinks, _I have one that could use granting_.

But people like him don't get free passes like that.

  * ●●●●



“Alright, everybody! Gather around!” Sara claps her hands as the rest of them trudges to the bridge.

Mick just wants to go back to sleep. He leans against the doorway, hanging in the back and rolling the beer bottle between his gloved palms.

Sara takes a look at all of them and nods to herself when everyone’s accounted for. “As you’re all aware, the holidays season is open.” She says.

_Oh, Jesus_. He’s gonna need a stronger drink if this is going where he thinks it’s going.

“And you know what that means?” Sara asks them.

Haircut opens his mouth as to respond, face eager, but then frowns and solemnly says, “It’s the Day of Holiday slaughter soon?”

Everyone looks at him strangely, even Mick making a second take at the words, bottle frozen halfway to his mouth.

“Did I say something wrong?” He wonders when he notices their looks.

“Apologies for interrupting,” Gideon says smoothly, “but I have detected a time anomaly in New York, 1978.”

“Let me guess, it’s a murder?” Zari responds to the information.

“Series of mass murders, to be exact, Ms. Tomaz. There had been incidents throughout the whole city, children and whole families found dead on Christmas morning.”

Mick grunts, “And what? We’re gonna arrest Santa for it?” He asks mockingly.

“Funny you mentioned it, Mr. Rory, as the few witnesses have reported seeing a “man dressed in red” leaving the scenes of crime.”

Constantine raises his eyebrows, along with others on the ship _. Maybe it was just the blood_ , Mick muses.

“Oh, God,” Haircut says emphatically, “ _Santa is a serial killer_.”

“Great,” Sara grouches, “I guess we’re going to 1978, then.”

  * ●●●●



Santa is a twisted, sick fucker.

“This is disgusting,” Zari says with a grimace.

Mick grunts and tips his head to the side, trying to figure out how the hell the blood got splattered on the damn ceiling. It’s something to do with artery pressure, he thinks, remembering Len telling him about it once.

He shoves the thought in the back of his head and trudges out of the room, bypassing Haircut- who’s playing the good cop and talking to the neighbors- and goes to the kitchen to find a drink.

They’re at one of the last crime scenes discovered. Apparently, since there are so many unrelated murders (unrelated in a way that there’s no connection between them except for the time of death- late Christmas Eve or early Christmas morning) they have to solve this clusterfuck of a case, so they can figure out who is the killer, go back one day before the murders happened, and then grab the psycho.

Mick should have taken a pass on this one, like English did.

“Regular weird is not my field of expertise,” he had said. Mick hates to admit it, but he made a right call. There are entirely too many people crying, and entirely too little booze and things on fire. He’s bored.

Len would love it though. He’d make charts and those wall maps and shit, and look at every angle, consider every possibility, and talk Mick’s ears off about it until Mick couldn’t help but be interested.

There’s no alcohol in the house. _Damnit_.

  * ●●●●



The rest of them are knocking their heads trying to solve the case while Mick and Constantine drink. They’re completely ignoring each other because everything else leads to a fight with them- and also because Sara might have threatened both of them with bodily harm if they don’t play nice.

Mick’s on his fifth glass of scotch when Charlie swears, and he pokes his head out of the kitchen to see Gideon playing a recording from a security camera.

He stares at it, blinks, looks at the glass in his hand, then stares at the recording some more.

There’s a guy in a familiar suit- even with Mick not being a fan of Christmas- crawling out of the ground floor window of an apartment building.

“I’ll be damned,” Constantine comments. He had also leaned into the doorway to take a look.

“Santa really is a serial killer,” Haircut says.

Mick is not drunk enough for this. He takes the whole bottle and leaves for his room.

  * ●●●●



They get the… _Santa_. Well, the whacko dressed as Santa (Constantine informed them that the real Santa doesn’t exist). They found him in a diner, eating a burger and drinking Coke.

He’s locked up in the brig and Mick muted the video feed for the room because otherwise, he’d torch the fucker. The guy’s making his skin crawl even without the whole “ho, ho, ho” bullshit.

They get the killer- and it doesn’t change anything. Gideon still informs them the timeline hasn’t changed back as it should have.

“I don’t understand,” Zari says, “if he’s here, how are the murders still happening?”

Nobody has an answer to that.

Charlie stares at the monitor, expression pinched and then widens her eyes. “Oh, you lot have to see this.”

Everyone crams in front of the screen. The guy has the Christmas lights hung up around the walls (the hell did he even fixate them with?) along with a shitload of other Christmas decorations. He’s producing the candy canes from his hands as they’re watching.

“What the hell,” Sara says.

“Just when I thought it couldn’t get weirder,” Zari adds and Mick can’t agree more.

  * ●●●●



Mick begrudgingly nears towards the brig. The air smells like cinnamon and powdered sugar and he scowls. This is bullshit. He can’t believe they made him do this.

“But, Mick, you’re the only one who doesn’t like Christmas. He can’t charm you.”

Assholes, all of them. If he doesn’t get to at least deck the fucker, he’s gonna be so pissed.

“Oh! Hello! How wonderful of you to visit me!” The fake Santa chirps.

Mick feels like throwing up.

“Cut the shit,” he says instead, “why are the saps still dying?”

The fake Santa looks at him with confusion, his ruddy, jolly expression wiped off.

“Dying? Oh, dear, that’s not good.”

“No shit. How are you doing it?”

“Me? You think I’m killing people?” The fake Santa acts surprised. It’s… surprisingly convincing, Mick admits.

“We know you are. So drop the act.” He grunts. He really has zero patience for these games.

The fake Santa shakes his head, “No, there must have been a misunderstanding. I would never harm anyone.”

Mick sighs. Sara told him he’s not allowed to knock him out until they get some answers.

“Then what the fuck is going on?”

The fake Santa scrutinizes him. “You’re an angry one. So much grief there, child.”

Mick bristles. He hasn’t been a “child” for more than 3 decades.

Apparently oblivious to the glare Mick aims at him, the fake Santa keeps talking. “I’m sorry for your loss. I understand it has been very hard for you to take it. Even now you’re grieving him.”

Mick feels his face growing hot with anger. He hears Sara’s warning “Mick,” in his ear, opens the brig door.

And punches the fucker in his face.

  * ●●●●



Okay. So he might have overreacted. Big deal. Like they’re actually surprised.

“I can’t believe you punched the Santa,” Zari says absently.

Right. The old fart in the brig? He’s the real deal. Apparently, English was wrong ( _in his face!_ ) and the old, jolly man exists. Whatever. He still deserved getting decked.

And what’s he gonna do? Give Mick coal for Christmas?

He grunts in response.

They still don’t know who’s popping folks left and right and they’ve got four hours until the first murder happens.

So maybe they should focus on that instead of Mick’s itty-bitty, tiny slip up.

  * ●●●●



“If this is the real Santa- who’s killing people?” Haircut asks.

“An evil doppelganger?”

“An imposter?”

“A shapeshifter?”

Everyone looks at Charlie. She shrugs. “What? Did you think I’m the only one?”

Constantine points at her, “That is brilliant. If I were an evil, bloodthirsty shifter, shifting into someone who can enter a house without raising any suspicion would be my best option.”

He sounds like he put a lot of thought into that. Mick thinks it’s disturbing at best and just downright creepy as fuck at worst.

  * ●●●●



Mick skips the final showdown. In fact, he oversleeps it, and still trudges out of his room too soon. They’re just bidding the Santa (the real one) goodbye when he makes his way to the coffee machine.

He ignores them all completely, responding in grunts. He’s not in the mood for this sappy shit. He never is anymore. With Len, sometimes; because the bastard ran and hid from the feelings like they were out to get him. In a way, they did, in the end.

The mug clinks sharply against the counter when he sets it down and the coffee in his throat tastes too bitter. His chest aches harder than usual.

He just wishes for Len to come back.

When he turns to return to his room, the Santa is gone and the others have skittered away as well.

  * ●●●●



At first, he’s not sure what woke him up. He blinks away the haze, scrubs his hands over his face and then hears it.

A dull thud, then some swearing. He has to still be half asleep because it sounds suspiciously familiar. It’s only his ears playing tricks on him, has to be that.

On the other hand, they’re back in 2018, and Mick is not above thinking someone somehow found the Waverider and broke in. That’s an unlikely scenario, though.

He throws the comforter off himself and gets up all the same. While he’s already awake…

He instructs Gideon to turn on the lights on the bridge- he doesn’t fancy tripping and breaking something. And then he freezes.

It’s dark outside, probably just around midnight, lights cast out of the room through the window turning the snow outside into glittering diamonds.

Len is clutching the control panel, startled by the light and staring back at Mick. He- he looks alive. Exactly like the last time Mick saw him.

He scowls. Mick’s stomach twists.

“Are you gonna just stand there and stare?”

Mick swallows thickly, “You’re not real. You’re a hallucination.”

Len frowns at him, then scowls harder. “I’m not- I’ll show you-“ he lets go of the panel, but then thinks better of it, because he sways on his feet uncertainly, and grabs it again.

“I’ll show you just how real I am- as soon as I get my body under control again,” he says with dissatisfaction, “now get over here.”

Mick doesn’t move.

Len sighs, “Mick, haul your ass over here. C’mon.”

Mick shuffles closer, if only to get a better look at him. God, he missed his face. Photos don’t do it justice.

Len reaches out and pinches his hand. _Hard._

“Fuck!” Mick swears, equal parts surprise and pain, rubbing the skin of his hand. He almost trips over his own feet (so much about the light keeping him from breaking something) and rights himself in the last second. He holds onto the panel next to Len, both of them staring at the other.

“You believe me now? Or do I have to pinch you again?” Len snaps, but it’s not the angry kind of a snap. Fine, maybe a little bit.

“What’s going on here?”

They both snap their heads to the doorway where the rest of the Legends are now huddled, watching them with various degrees of disbelief, confusion, and wonder.

“Can you see him?” Mick asks them urgently.

He jumps when Len pinches him again. “Fuck! What the hell!” He swears.

“Just showing everyone that I am, in fact, real,” Len responds like it justifies everything.

“How?” Sara asks.

Len lifts his hand- frowns at the red ribbon bow tied around his wrist- and holds up his index finger. “No idea.”

There’s a tense silence for a moment, broken only by Mick’s heart hammering in his ears.

_Len is back_.

“You bastard,” he says, standing up and taking hold of Len’s upper arms, so they’re facing each other, “don’t you ever again dare pull a stunt like that.”

Len’s scowl eases away, expression turning apologetic. He just nods mutely and settles his hands on Mick’s elbows.

Mick kisses him. They don’t do this in public, he knows, and he’s ready for Len’s rant later, but now he kisses him because he thought he’d never again get the chance. Len meets him halfway, eagerly and welcoming. Everything is as it should be again.

There are shuffling feet and a few ‘oh’s and Haircut’s damn hand watch going off.

“Oh, guys! It’s Christmas!” He announces from further away in the Waverider. Mick runs his hands up Len’s arms and cups his face.

“I still want to know how he’s back,” Sara says faintly.

“Maybe it’s a Christmas miracle!” Haircut exclaims.

Mick laughs. He holds onto Len, warm, and solid, and alive- and he laughs.


End file.
